A review of the NLP Alpha Leadership in Coaching course, February 2003-02-12
Having read the Alpha Leadership website but not the
book and having read and heard about the work of Robert Dilts, I have to
admit that I was very keen to see Dilts in action, but less clear about
what Alpha Leadership was, is or will be. I think that this open minded
approach actually helped because the course focussed more on coaching
leaders than on the leadership model in itself.
Before I begin, you probably want to know more about
Alpha Leadership itself. For the past 20 years or so, Robert Dilts has
been studying, modelling and just hanging around with a whole range of
outstanding people. One of the things that interested Dilts was the
notion of "leadership" and specifically, what makes an outstanding
leader.
Robert Dilts then got together with Anne Deering and Julian
Russell to turn this experience of leadership into a model, a book and a
training course aimed at developing leadership potential. Actually, the
main body of the course was aimed at people who develop people with
leadership potential, as you'll see later.
So, Alpha Leadership is a model of leadership ability.
It can be replicated by anyone who wants to develop themselves and it
really lends itself well to developing leaders who are strong in one
area of the model yet weak in another. Like any model, it's true without
being accurate so you may or may not agree with any of the specific
elements. Having said that, it strikes me as a neat model and one that's
easy to understand, remember and apply - and that makes it practical and
useful which is, for me, the most important thing.
The model breaks leadership into three areas;
Anticipate, Align and Act. Clearly, if you want a detailed description
of the model you should buy the book or visit www.alphaleaders.com to
learn more. The names of the three broad areas are really self
explanatory so I'll just add that within each area there are three
further distinctions of the behavioural elements of great leadership.
Throughout the course, the three "trainers" used the
practice of training horses as a metaphor for leadership. Essentially,
authoritarian, dictatorial leadership was likened to the traditional
practice of "horse breaking" where a horse is forced into submission.
Horse breaking takes a few days to reach the first milestone in the
training program. Recently, a controversial approach to horse training
has appeared which, like all radical ideas, actually seems like a return
to traditional methods. This new approach, called "Horse Whispering"
involves the trainer understanding the horse, speaking it's non-verbal
language and using techniques modelled from wild horses to bring the
trainee horse to that same milestone in a much shorter time - in the
video that we saw, just 11 minutes!
From this point on, horse breaking was used as a
metaphor by trainer and audience for "old style, bad" leadership and
horse whispering was used as a metaphor for "new style, good"
leadership. My insatiable curiosity made me wonder about this, so at the
end of the day I went to Robert Dilts and asked "We've talked about
horse breaking as bad and horse whispering as good, what I want to know
is - what's the flipside of horse whispering?" In answering this
question, I found Dilts to be very accessible, open, honest and without
any ego or point to prove. I liked him already! He said "Well, you know,
a lot of people really get hung up on the metaphor, but actually it's
just about training horses!" Then, he gave me a very straight and honest
answer to my question, "I guess horse whispering has a tendency to
create cults".
So, now I had all the information I needed to make up
my own mind - and I hope you do too!
But what about the other two? Well, if you want to
know what the presenters were like I would say: Dilts - thoughtful and
insightful with a great clarity of explanation. Russell - empathic and
supportive with a great enthusiasm for helping people achieve their
best. Deering - upbeat and reflective with a great talent for drawing
out learning.
Of course, those descriptions apply to all three of
them, so these were just the characteristics that stood out to me. The
three of them represented a spectrum of experience and style that worked
well in a highly interactive, open environment.
Essentially, Alpha Leadership is a model which is used
by great relationship builders, people who create great loyalty and
commitment. They never seem to ask for anything directly but the people
around them delight in taking action. These Alpha Leaders understand the
ultimate goal or purpose and they align people and resources to achieve
that purpose. A key characteristic is that they adopt a ready-fire-aim
approach to new ideas. This does not mean that they act before they're
ready, it means they act early and adapt and refine as they go, rather
than waiting for an idea to be perfect. They are open to new ideas and
information that other people miss and by doing this they often steal a
lead on their competitors.
You can probably see how this
style has both upsides and downsides and, for me, I can see how this
approach would work well in some organisations and not in others. At
this point, we're entering into a discussion on leadership
effectiveness, not Alpha Leadership so I will end with my
recommendation: If Dilts, Deering and Russell are back in town, go see
for yourself, be entertained, informed and involved and then decide for
yourself how to add Alpha Leadership to your armoury of coaching tools.
And remember, being only one model, it's up to you to decide how to use
it. It's just horses for courses, I guess!
You may want to read more about Neuro-Linguistic Programming
You may want to read more about Neuro-Linguistic Programming